Thanks, found it. It's 149/3.08 (lol), but I don't know whether those are the school's current numbers, or the numbers from the 1993-94 school year when my degree was awarded. University of Texas at Arlington.

Thanks, found it. It's 149/3.08 (lol), but I don't know whether those are the school's current numbers, or the numbers from the 1993-94 school year when my degree was awarded. University of Texas at Arlington.

I'm pretty sure it's averaged over the last few (5?) years before CAS processed your transcript, not historical data based on when you got your degree.

(I don't know why I'm saying 5 years, but that number is in my head for some reason.)

Remember that those are average GPAs for people applying to law school, not the entire school.

Also, it's entirely possible (dare I say probable?) that people at Ivy League schools just tend to be smarter than people at most other schools. This coming from someone who did not go to an Ivy League UG. I'd bet all the money I have that the average Harvard UG student is smarter than the average student at my UG. This, not "grade inflation," explains why H and Y have higher mean GPAs than, say, University of Neva Las Vegas.

Remember that those are average GPAs for people applying to law school, not the entire school.

Also, it's entirely possible (dare I say probable?) that people at Ivy League schools just tend to be smarter than people at most other schools. This coming from someone who did not go to an Ivy League UG. I'd bet all the money I have that the average Harvard UG student is smarter than the average student at my UG. This, not "grade inflation," explains why H and Y have higher mean GPAs than, say, University of Neva Las Vegas.

Ya. I'm amazed at how many students at my BigStateU neither go to class nor study. I would guess that students that go to Ivy League universities for undergrad do at least one of these.

Remember that those are average GPAs for people applying to law school, not the entire school.

Also, it's entirely possible (dare I say probable?) that people at Ivy League schools just tend to be smarter than people at most other schools. This coming from someone who did not go to an Ivy League UG. I'd bet all the money I have that the average Harvard UG student is smarter than the average student at my UG. This, not "grade inflation," explains why H and Y have higher mean GPAs than, say, University of Neva Las Vegas.

Yes ivies have better students, but make no mistake about it the more elite the schools the more grade inflation.

zman wrote:Yes ivies have better students, but make no mistake about it the more elite the schools the more grade inflation.

And your evidence for this is...?

Let's look at the numbers. For convenience, we'll look at Harvard College and Boston University. If Harvard has grade inflation compared to BU, then the gap between the average GPAs of law school applicants from Harvard College and BU should be smaller than the gap between the average high school GPAs of each.

zman wrote:Yes ivies have better students, but make no mistake about it the more elite the schools the more grade inflation.

And your evidence for this is...?

Let's look at the numbers. For convenience, we'll look at Harvard College and Boston University. If Harvard has grade inflation compared to BU, then the gap between the average GPAs of law school applicants from Harvard College and BU should be smaller than the gap between the average high school GPAs of each.

First, let us define "grade inflation" as "higher grades compared to other schools around the country." Sometimes, when people talk about grade inflation, they actually mean the gradual inflation of grades over time (where, over time, more and more A's are awarded and fewer and fewer C's, similar to inflation of a currency), but I'm pretty sure that's not what people mean when they look at the average GPAs of Harvard/Yale/etc. compared to the average GPAs of BU/BC/etc. So we'll use that first definition.

Now, say Selective U. is more selective in its undergraduate admissions than E-Z U., but because the average uGPA of students at Selective is much higher than the average uGPA of students at E-Z, you still suspect that there is grade inflation at Selective relative to E-Z. To discover whether this is the case, we need to compare the gap between the average high school GPA (a measure of selectivity, albeit an imperfect one) of each college's students to the average undergraduate GPA of each college's students. If the gap between average uGPA is greater than the gap between average high school GPA, you'd have a case for the hypothesis that there is grade inflation is Selective U. If the gap between average uGPA is actually smaller than the gap between average high school GPA, it seems there would be a case for arguing that there is grade inflation at E-Z U., not at Selective U.!

Well, this is exactly what we did when looking at Harvard College and Boston University.

First, let us define "grade inflation" as "higher grades compared to other schools around the country." Sometimes, when people talk about grade inflation, they actually mean the gradual inflation of grades over time (where, over time, more and more A's are awarded and fewer and fewer C's, similar to inflation of a currency), but I'm pretty sure that's not what people mean when they look at the average GPAs of Harvard/Yale/etc. compared to the average GPAs of BU/BC/etc. So we'll use that first definition.

Now, say Selective U. is more selective in its undergraduate admissions than E-Z U., but because the average uGPA of students at Selective is much higher than the average uGPA of students at E-Z, you still suspect that there is grade inflation at Selective relative to E-Z. To discover whether this is the case, we need to compare the gap between the average high school GPA (a measure of selectivity, albeit an imperfect one) of each college's students to the average undergraduate GPA of each college's students. If the gap between average uGPA is greater than the gap between average high school GPA, you'd have a case for the hypothesis that there is grade inflation is Selective U. If the gap between average uGPA is actually smaller than the gap between average high school GPA, it seems there would be a case for arguing that there is grade inflation at E-Z U., not at Selective U.!

Well, this is exactly what we did when looking at Harvard College and Boston University.

Ok, yeah, I don't think this works. At the very least, it's building in a lot of assumptions that you're not acknowledging. A few problems:

* Harvard and BU aren't pulling from the same high schools, and there's no reason to think that the high school grade schools are comparable. One might argue, for instance, that Harvard is more likely to get students from the sorts of preppy high schools that offer grade bumps for AP/accelerated (which is the only way that they could be maintaining that 4.0 average, given that I'm sure Harvard College lets in students who got less than 4.0). Basically, if the grade inflation at Prep-High relative to grade inflation at Regular-High is more than the grade inflation at Harvard relative to BU, your method will conclude that Harvard is grade-deflating relative to BU.

* You're using average uGPA of LS applicants, but average high school GPA of all students. Those populations aren't necessarily comparable across schools. High-GPA Harvard people might be more likely to go to business school, while high-GPA BU people might be more likely to go to law school. Or a variety of other explanations.

* Your analysis is making various assumptions about the shape of the distributions of grades in high school and college. Even if both are normal distributions, if the standard deviation of grades is less in college than it is in high school (across the board), you would expect the difference in average uGPA to shrink even if no schools are grade inflating relative to others.

* There's also a reversion to the mean problem. Everyone's high school GPA is based on some combination of skill and luck. You expect people with the high GPAs who got into Harvard to have, on average, benefited more from the luck factor than the people with the low GPAs who went to BU. Since luck in high school is uncorrelated with luck in college, reversion to the mean dictates that the difference in performance between the two schools will probably shrink in the second measurement.

To make a convincing argument along these lines, I think you have to do something like what Berkeley did a while ago: look at students who end up at the same law school from different undergrads, and compare how uGPA correlates with law school GPA coming from the various undergrads. (Alternatively you could try to find a bunch of people from the same high school who went to very different undergrads, but I'm guessing the samples are going to be a lot harder to find that way).

In the 1950's, average GPA was around a 2.5, regardless of public of private university. Then after a slight dip, you see public and private schools both gain, but private schools radically more so. Private raises to 3.0, public to 2.75. After that, both private and public raise relatively the same, but that 70's gap persists.

So in '94, Harvard was giving out, on average .5 more gpa to the average student (!!!) than BU. This is also during a time when the average private university GPA was ~3.15. So BU was .3 lower than average for private, .15 lower than all schools. Harvard was .2 above private schools, .3 above all schools. From 94-2004, BU increased their GPA by .2, and they were still below average for private and almost exactly on par with all schools. Harvard increased by .1, so they were .1 above private, and .3 above all.

GPA's are inflated in single schools, by looking at GPA mean increasing year after year. Private schools are inflated over publics because of the 1970's separation. Harvard is an especially egregious offender. Brown is the worst.

If someone has some time, it'd be fun to use this older, more complete data :